Diedrich Diederichsen
Vortrag 

Diedrich Diederichsen is not only one of the most important German authors, music critics and art theorists, he has also accompanied Mathias Poledna’s practice from the very beginning. Having largely enriched Poledna’s publications and exhibition catalogs with his essayistic text contributions, it is possible to argue that Diederichsen is not only an expert on Poledna’s oeuvre, but has also helped to shape it, then described it.

On the basis of his contribution to the publication, conceived against the backdrop of Poledna’s film produced in Los Angeles in the summer of 2024especially for the exhibition at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Diederichsen will discuss and present Mathias Poledna’s artistic career with references to music and art history as well as pop culture.

As such, Diederichsen shows that Mathias Poledna does not view the culture, fashion and film industries as something abstract, but as a system which we are all integrated, and in which these different artistic productions merge into one another to produce paradoxical results. Whether it is a rock band working through genre modules, as in his film Actualité (2001), or Poledna’s Western Recording (2003), which lends a singer unexpected melancholic depth, Poledna’s examination of cultural-industrial and counter-cultural material is always rooted in rarely taken perspectives, examining source material with artistic precision.

Poledna’s practice is often concerned with how snapshots of history, particularly modernity, are negotiated, and, remembered and archived in relation to contemporary cultural phenomena.